Behind The Chinese Room's new take on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2

gamedeveloper.com:

There's been much secrecy regarding Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2, the sequel to the 2004 cult favorite vampire RPG. First announced in 2019—with the original creatives returning for the sequel—work on that game hit a roadblock, and a creative and developer shakeup was announced in 2021.

Two years later, we've finally learned about the current state of Paradox Interactive's Bloodlines 2, now headed up by narrative adventure developer The Chinese Room, the studio behind Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone To The Rapture.

Aside from some returning characters and the setting of a supernatural Seattle, this revival of Bloodlines 2 features an entirely new story and a different approach to a vampire RPG than its earlier incarnation.

At PAX West 2023, I had the opportunity to speak with The Chinese Room studio design director Alex Skidmore and VP of the World of Darkness brand Sean Greaney about work on the new Bloodlines 2, why The Chinese Room was the right developer to bring this version to life, and why change needed to happen in the first place.

What made the original Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines from Troika Games such an endearing role-playing game is how it leveraged the mystique and scope of the tabletop role-playing game within an open-ended video game, and the first sequel planned to follow up on that structure.

The original 2004 game is a dense action-RPG with a rich setting, so seeing developer The Chinese Room—known for smaller-scale atmospheric narrative-driven adventure games—take over is an interesting choice.

The shift to a new developer was part of a larger goal to refocus the game's vision and approach to a World of Darkness property, the larger franchise in which Vampire: The Masquerade operates.